'Tis the season for dogwood berries (Harvey Cotten)

Can you help me? My large pink dogwood has red berries on it right
now, but soon the birds will devour them all. How can I plant them and get them
to come up. Thank you, Michelle K.

Dear Michelle,

Often if the dogwood berry is ripe, you can squeeze the fruit and the seed will pop out â easy way to clean just a few dozen seeds. (Submitted)Submitted

'Tis the season for dogwood berries,
and that sure brings back memories of my youth.
Growing up in the nursery business, dogwood berry season was an
important time of the year for a wholesale nursery that specialized in
Flowering dogwoods. This area of north
Alabama up into middle Tennessee had hundreds of nurseries growing dogwoods
each year and it all began with collecting the seeds. Just this past weekend I drove from
Huntsville up to Sewanee and saw several people out in the front yard picking
dogwood berries for local nurseries.
Each time I see a dogwood berry cluster I instinctively pick one and
squeeze it to see if the seed will pop out of the fruit capsule – if so, they
are ready to be picked and then cleaned for storage.

You are also right to fear the birds
for they love to eat dogwood berries.
The good news is that there are plenty of other food sources for them
right now and it gives us a bit of a head start to get the berries before they
do. I don't know if you saw the article
I wrote on Kousa dogwood several weeks ago, but the fruit clusters of this
Chinese dogwood is turning red and ripening, and fortunately the birds go after
these fruits first, giving us a bit more time to harvest the seeds before they
are eaten or they fall off the tree due to wind and cold.

The first thing to do is go out and
pick the berries – not an easy way to do this other than grab a bucket and grab
all the ones you can. Be careful to not
break off the dormant flower buds that are present at the ends of the stems
– these buds are the flowers that will open next spring. I have seen some people lay a sheet or
blanket under the tree and then shake the tree to make the berries fall
off. Personally, I like picking them
better and I know I am not harming the tree in any way.

After picking, you have a few choices
to make, with the first being whether to clean the seed. Most nurseries that grow thousands of dogwood
seed will clean the berries first of the pulpy red mass covering the hard, tan
seed found inside. Often, if the berry is
ripe, you can squeeze the fruit and the seed will pop out – easy way to clean
just a few dozen seeds. If you have a
lot of seeds or if the seed coats have hardened, then you must soak the seeds in
water for about a week to soften the pulpy mass. Let me warn you that this will create a
smelly concoction as the fruits begin to ferment. Pour off the water after a few days and fill
back up with clean water. When the
fruits are soft, you can mash them with your hands or rub over a wire
screen. I have used a household blender
for this, but boy did I get in trouble after doing that, so clear it with your
spouse first.

After the seeds are cleaned, you are ready to plant directly in the
ground or to put in the refrigerator for a few months. In nature, fruits, berries, acorns, drupes,
etc., ripen in the fall of the year, drop to the forest floor and lay dormant in
the leaf litter until the warm days of spring.
Most of us assume they are just waiting for warm weather to
germinate, but this winter dormant period is very important to the seed. The embryo of the seed needs this period of wet-cold weather before it will expand and send out the root
and stem parts of the plant. This is
called cold stratification and happens naturally in the wild. The temperatures needed for this to
occur are between freezing and 50 degrees F with 41 degrees F being the
optimum. Most plants need three to four
months of this (the winter months) to satisfy their requirement so another
method is to take the clean seed, mix it with moist potting soil, place in a
zip-lock bag and put it in the refrigerator until March. Make sure the potting soil is moist and not
dry for the seeds need to imbibe water during this stratification process.

When picking dogwood berries, be careful to not break off the dormant flower buds at the ends of the stems â these buds are the flowers that will open next spring. (Submitted)Submitted

In March, take the seeds out of the refrigerator and plant in a
seed bed or place in pots with a soilless mix.
Seedlings will germinate with the onset of warm weather and be sure to
protect young seedlings if a late spring frost threatens. I would grow the seedlings in place (either
the seed bed or the pot) until the fall before transplanting to another
location or into a larger pot.

I know there were several steps involved, but this method will
insure the highest germination rate. To
simplify, you could harvest the berries, plant them in a seedbed now and see
what comes up in the spring – my guess will be about a 30 percent to 40 percent germination
rate, not bad if you want just a few trees.
Also, remember that it will take seven to 10 years before you will see a
flower on your dogwood trees, so be patient.

I hope this helps and I
wish you great success in growing your own dogwoods.

It's pansy-planting time – get them in
the ground early so they can establish an extensive root system before
cold weather sets in. Also mums
need to be planted – I really like the Belgian types for outstanding color
displays.

Poinsettias need at least 14 hours of
complete darkness to show color by the holidays.

Move frost-tender plants that have
been grown outside into a shady spot before moving them inside – you are trying
to condition them for the lower light of indoors